Several young women testify on TikTok how they were hit out of the blue in New York by a man they don’t know. Many are left with ugly bumps or a black eye. One perpetrator has now been arrested, but it is believed to involve several men.
Halley Kate, an American with more than a million followers on TikTok, shared a video on Monday in which she says that she had just been beaten by an unknown man. The influencer is still crying on the street when she films herself. An ugly bump has formed on her forehead. “It hurts so much,” she says, sobbing. In a later update, Halley says she was checking her cell phone when it happened, but there was plenty of room for the man to walk by. “I don’t know if he hit me or elbowed me. I immediately fell to the ground.”
Not much later, similar stories appear on the app. The same thing happened to Mikayla Toninato just a day later. “I was also looking at my cell phone when a man suddenly punched me in the face,” she says. “I texted my friends that this had happened and they replied with a TikTok of another girl doing the same thing.” The same day, a third girl posts a video from a restaurant. She also has a huge bump on her head. “Only I wasn’t looking at my phone. Be careful out there!”
The large number of reactions and stories seems to indicate that this is about a disturbing phenomenon in New York. There are stories that date back to December last year. In addition, some victims clearly saw a white man, while others referred to a black man. So there would be several perpetrators.
Halley Kate announced on Wednesday that an arrest had been made in her case. The man who was arrested is 40-year-old Skiboky Stora. The suspect already had charges of a similar nature against him, for which he had to answer on Wednesday. He is a well-known figure in New York who has stood up for local elections a few times. Stora is not currently linked to the other cases.
